Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- India will unveil its first home-built anti-submarine warship tomorrow in a move to deter China
from conducting underwater patrols near its shores.

Defense Minister Arun Jaitley will commission the 3,300-ton
INS Kamorta at the southeastern Vishakapatnam port. The move
comes a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the
largest indigenously built guided-missile destroyer and vowed to
bolster the country’s defenses so “no one dares to cast an evil
glance at India.”

India is playing catch-up to China, which built 20 such
warships in the past two years and sent a nuclear submarine to
the Indian Ocean in December for a two-month anti-piracy patrol.
The waters are home to shipping lanes carrying about 80 percent
of the world’s seaborne oil, mostly headed to China and Japan.

“As China grows into a naval, maritime power, it will be
more and more active in the Indian Ocean,” Taylor Fravel, a
professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies
China’s ties with its neighbors, said by phone. “Of course, it
will not be due to some hostility or targeted at India, but
because of its economic interests in the Indian Ocean, as a lot
of trade passes through. Such a presence will certainly raise
questions in India, but it need not necessarily be a cause of
major conflict.”

Warship Plans

India has lacked anti-submarine corvettes in its 135-warship fleet for more than a decade now, with the
decommissioning of the last of the 10-ship Petya-class of 1960s-vintage Soviet corvettes in December 2003. It plans to build 42
more warships, including three more anti-submarine corvettes,
over the next decade, according to Rear Admiral A.B. Singh, an
Indian navy official.

About 90 percent of Kamorta’s components are local, with
the hull developed by Steel Authority of India Ltd., medium-range guns by Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. and torpedo
launchers by Larsen & Toubro Ltd, India’s largest engineering
company. The ship is two years behind schedule, according to
Commodore B.B. Nagpal, the navy’s principal director for naval
design.

“It’s a beef up of the Indian Navy’s anti-submarine
warfare capabilities against Chinese submarines,” Rear Admiral
Raja Menon, a retired Indian official, said by phone, referring
to the Kamorta, which is named after an Indian island that was a
convict settlement in the 1800s.

Even so, he said, “Indian warship building is not
comparable to an aggressively modernizing Chinese navy. There is
no way we can match China’s efforts.”

China Surge

China has built 20 Jiangdao-class anti-submarine corvettes
since February 2013, when it unveiled the first one. At least 10
more will join the Chinese naval service in the coming months,
according to data from IHS Jane’s.

China’s Jiangdao-class anti-submarine ships are about half
the size of the Kamorta and designed to operate in shallow
water, said Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, a retired Indian navy
officer. The Indian ship can store helicopters on board and
possesses surface warfare and air defense capabilities, he said.

Jaitley, who’s also India’s finance minister, eased rules
for foreign investment in the nation’s defense sector and raised
spending 12 percent in the current fiscal year to help modernize
the armed forces. China spent $188 billion on defense in 2013,
about four times more than India, according to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.

Energy Needs

China has at least 52 submarines in its fleet, including
three nuclear-missile vessels and three operating on nuclear
power, the U.S. Congressional Research Service said in July,
citing Jane’s Fighting Ships 2013-2014 and previous editions.
India has a fleet of 14 diesel-electric submarines and a
Russian-origin nuclear-powered submarine, according to the
Indian Navy.

Chinese warships voyaged to the Gulf of Aden for the first
time to join anti-piracy patrols in December 2008, two months
after India deployed its warships in that role, and have since
maintained a presence there. About half of China’s oil imports
pass through the Strait of Hormuz and three-quarters of Japan’s,
according to data from the Observer Research Foundation.

China’s growth means its future energy needs can be met
only by supplies from the Gulf region, Africa and North America,
according to a 2010 study from the U.S. Defense Department. Such
supply points will keep China reliant on maritime transport even
as it seeks to develop pipelines to avoid sensitive sea routes
such as the Strait of Malacca, it said.